A Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) represents a circuit employed to generate an analog signal from its binary, digital representation. Simplistically speaking, if the input of a DAC is coupled to appropriate computational circuitry and output is coupled to an appropriate transducer arrangement, a digital audio system is created.
Modern electronic devices tend to be much more sophisticated. For example, most desktop or laptop computers and even portable entertainment devices such as the iPod™, available from Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., can generate high fidelity audio from stored or streamed digital data using highly sophisticated DACs.
With respect to portable devices, for example, there is a premium on devices that can generate the highest quality sound using the lowest amount of power and/or the smallest form factor. Accordingly, manufacturers constantly try to improve DAC designs, striving to improve the output quality and reducing the power requirement and/or the size of the DAC or the size of the audio circuitry of which the DAC plays an indispensable role.
The present application pertains to an improved DAC architecture that can be employed to generate high fidelity audio output with minimal power requirement and/or minimal footprint.